Hi David,
There's no perfect licensing strategy. The Gluu Server source code, packages, documentation and community support is free. But it's not an inexpensive product to develop. We offer additional tools to help incentivize organizations to purchase support so we can continue to maintain, extend and support the software.
That said, you don't need to use cluster manager to cluster--you can [manually cluster](https://gluu.org/docs/ce/installation-guide/cluster/) your server.
However, for 450 users, the cost of clusters is really high. With a good backup strategy, you should be able to meet you uptime requirements without the additional hassle of clusters.
Sorry, but we can not afford to provide guaranteed support for less than the existing pricing offered.
Best of luck.
Will